Another gross post. What is with this guy playing barefoot? Just nasty. Not even going to get into the affected way he is playing, the exaggerated/jerky movements, the mugging, can he be any more of a douche.

The guy is all flash. He plays precise but if you remove the visual and just listen, there is nothing interesting there. It's a legitimately boring performance musically.

People here were complaining about Lola Astanova. Same thing but I'd much rather watch her play a run of the mill classical performance than watch this guy play covers acting like a jack-ass. At least she looks great and treats the instrument with respect. This guy is barefoot, pounding on the case, rubbing the strings, a disgrace if you ask me.

Another gross post. What is with this guy playing barefoot? Just nasty. Not even going to get into the affected way he is playing, the exaggerated/jerky movements, the mugging, can he be any more of a douche.

The guy is all flash. He plays precise but if you remove the visual and just listen, there is nothing interesting there. It's a legitimately boring performance musically.

People here were complaining about Lola Astanova. Same thing but I'd much rather watch her play a run of the mill classical performance than watch this guy play covers acting like a jack-ass. At least she looks great and treats the instrument with respect. This guy is barefoot, pounding on the case, rubbing the strings, a disgrace if you ask me.

Half a million subcribers and 62 million overall views and... yeah, I don't think he cares what we think.

Not really my cuppa either, but you gotta hand it to the guy for doing what he does.

My thoughts as well. My reaction was a bit of annoyance, not to mention irritation he has access to a nice Bosey. But why shouldn't this dude who obviously has chops do something like this. He's hustling in a world where it's hard to hustle.

One of the problems that keyboard players have- how do they compete with guitar players or singers on stage when they are just sitting behind a keyboard? Like it or not, this guy is putting on a visual performance, that matches the flamboyance of his playing and arrangement.

Another gross post. What is with this guy playing barefoot? Just nasty. Not even going to get into the affected way he is playing, the exaggerated/jerky movements, the mugging, can he be any more of a douche.

The guy is all flash. He plays precise but if you remove the visual and just listen, there is nothing interesting there. It's a legitimately boring performance musically.

People here were complaining about Lola Astanova. Same thing but I'd much rather watch her play a run of the mill classical performance than watch this guy play covers acting like a jack-ass. At least she looks great and treats the instrument with respect. This guy is barefoot, pounding on the case, rubbing the strings, a disgrace if you ask me.

As I recall from interviews way back years ago, Keith Jarrett gave plucking the grand piano strings with his fingers, as one of the reasons for his dismissal from Berklee College of Music (in Boston). As I recall, it was after being told not to. I think this was one of several reason - maybe certain other behaviors on Keith's part.

I feel supportive of anyone finding new and creative ways of using a looper. And although this guy doing the "Africa" cover is a bit Liberace(ish), I like what he's done.

And I wonder if you're as critical of Jacob Collier. I'm a big fan myself. There's a lot of much more mediocre music to dismiss (hey - 4 M's in a row !).

I recently watched a YouTube video of the same guy playing something else - the one I watched was obviously speed up artificially - was easy to spot because his head was whipping around at inhuman speed which - were it possible - would surely have resulted in brain trauma. I failed to notice if the video was official or just something doctored by a fan. Shall see if I can find it again later.

On a separate subject, this post was literally the third I saw yesterday dealing with updated arrangements of that song. (One on FB, one on one of those viral click-on-me feeds, and one here.)

Just curious about your thoughts: why this song? Is it kitschy/hipster-ironic? Did something in pop culture put it back into play? What's the story?

100% meme territory. Huge memein goin on.

To take it a bit further, I watched a short doc on Darude, composer of Sandstorm. Both the tunes have enjoyed meme revivals and lemme tell ya, their bank accounts ain't sad about it. The feeling is, "I'm not sure if they're laughing at us, with us, or at themselves, but they're still playing our songs over and over. "

Yeah, well I did a bit of deep googling on Collier's custom-built "harmonizer", and I WANT ONE. Roland, Kord, et.al -- are you listening? $$$$ It's not a vocoder, it's real-time assisted pitch shifting. How cool.

Seems you can get close with an Eventide Quadravox plug-in and a bunch of midi programming -- but the dude just sings into his mike and plays outrageous harmonies in real time using a standalone board.

I thought I'd throw in an extended example of some of Jacob Collier's considerable talents. I was thinking maybe he's a combination of Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein and Mozart. But that doesn't include the voice.